Good morning. It’s Monday. We’ll start the week with words about some seemingly sobering numbers that came out last week. We’ll also look at the rapport that has developed between Gov. Kathy Hochul and President Trump.
Let’s take a second look at two sets of numbers that were released last week and what’s driving them. On Tuesday, the city’s tourism agency said that about 400,000 fewer international tourists came to New York in 2025 than the year before. Then, on Thursday, new population figures came out, indicating that the number of new residents who moved here from other countries dropped by 70 percent from mid-2024 to mid-2025. That drop-off was the largest in the country and, along with more New Yorkers leaving for other places, stopped the recent growth of the city’s population. A common element is driving the numbers in both tourism and population: tighter federal border policies that accelerated with the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Visitors from countries the president lashed out at — amid a trade war on allies — have also stayed away. But so have new residents from foreign countries. “New York, like other big cities, is suffering from not having immigrants to settle in the U.S.,” said James Parrott, a senior fellow at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School. “The importance of immigration in helping to maintain the large population of New York has, at some level, been well accepted and understood for a long time.” The ripple effects of the decline in tourism are felt on Midtown streets. “We hear from street vendors who work in tourist locations like Times Square and Columbus Circle that business is down because there are less tourists visiting New York,” Mohamed Attia, a co-director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center, an advocacy group, wrote in an email. But street vendors are also acutely aware of how immigration policies are affecting who moves to New York. “It’s hard to find workers for their food carts because vendors are primarily immigrants,” Attia said, “and people are more fearful of working in public space.” Four of the city’s five boroughs — all but Staten Island — were among the top 10 counties in the U.S. with the largest declines in the number of new international residents. The city’s three largest boroughs — Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan — each recorded a drop in population, led by Queens, with 8,900 fewer residents. “Of course Queens is going to take a hit,” said Donovan Richards, the Queens borough president, noting that Queens residents represent 190 countries and speak 360 languages. The threat of immigration enforcement “is definitely more polarizing,” he said, adding that fewer people are going to a welcome center that his office opened in 2021. The Department of City Planning said the population figures that were released last week showed that the city had grown faster after the pandemic than previously thought. A change in the Census Bureau’s methodology revised the city’s population estimate for July 2024, changing it to 8.597 million people from 8.478 million. That, in turn, meant that population growth from mid-2022 to mid-2024 had been stronger than previously estimated — propelled, the planning department said, by international migration. The population change during the next 12 months, from mid-2024 through last July, was minimal, the department said. As for tourism, travelers from the U.S. made up the difference, and 2025 ended with a slightly higher total — 65 million, up 0.7 percent from 2024, according to New York City Tourism and Conventions, the city’s tourism agency. Parrot said he hoped the population falloff would be “a short-term thing.” And tourism officials see a brighter picture for 2026: New York City Tourism and Conventions is projecting that 66 million people will visit this year, roughly a million more than in 2025. WEATHER Today will be partly sunny, with a high near 64 and a chance of showers in the morning. Tonight is expected to be mostly cloudy, with a chance of rain and a low around 56. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Thursday (Holy Thursday, Passover). QUOTE OF THE DAY “I was a little too young when they were famous to know much about them. But now watching the show, I have become obsessed with reading and watching everything about them.” — Jules Skyler, a TikToker, on the FX series “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.” The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Hochul develops a rapport with Trump
Many Democratic officials have taken a confrontational approach in dealing with President Trump. Gov. Kathy Hochul has opted for cooperation when possible, and my colleague Grace Ashford writes that Hochul has developed an unusual rapport — and influence — with Trump. Here’s an example: Trump told governors at a breakfast meeting earlier this year that he would not escalate immigration enforcement in New York “unless Kathy asks.” Hochul said later that the moment had caught her off guard. Another example of how her strategy is paying off came last week. She met with Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and emerged with a deal to protect the health care of 1.3 million New Yorkers. “My approach is personal appeals and personal, you know, arguments,” she said. “I’ve done that for the last year now, and sometimes it’s successful. And sometimes it’s not.” She tried the personal approach when Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, was ushered into the governor’s offices in the State Capitol this month. She urged him to release students who were being detained, cancel a proposed detention center in Chester, N.Y., and guarantee that Trump’s promise not to send immigration agents to New York without her acquiescence would be honored. Federal officials have since walked back the Chester project. A handful of detainees — including Dylan Lopez Contreras, a high school student from the Bronx — have also been released, although it was unclear what, if any, influence the governor may have had in the actions. But on immigration, Homan asked that the governor allow ICE agents to enter New York prisons and jails. He argued that doing so would reduce the risk of public confrontations. Hochul has taken the middle ground, insisting that the state should assist federal immigration officials in criminal cases where a judge has issued a warrant. But she has also proposed banning localities from formally assisting ICE and barring agents from so-called sensitive areas like schools, hospitals and houses of worship. METROPOLITAN DIARY So close
Dear Diary: Headphones in my ears, I sauntered down Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side. The rhythm of the music had me dancing as I walked. When I crossed 76th Street, I flailed my arms as I danced. My phone fell out of my hands and into a storm drain. The phone was thin enough to have fallen straight through the bars of the grate, yet it was somehow dangling precariously about a foot from falling down to the sewer below. I bent down to retrieve it with my pudgy fingers but could not get to it. A woman and her teenage son noticed me hunched over. “My son can reach through the bar and grab it,” the woman said. Her offer was so kind, and she was so insistent, that I agreed. Her son got down and tried to slip his hands through the grate, but the space between the bars was too narrow. I thanked them profusely. A tourist in his 20s walked by and offered to call 311 for possible help, but when he did he got an intermittent busy signal. The woman who was with her son pointed out a hot dog cart across the street. I walked over to him, and he said he could try to grab my phone with his hot dog tongs. He sat down on the sidewalk near the drain and placed the tongs in the drain. The woman, her son, the young tourist and I looked on in sheer anticipation. The vendor tapped the phone slightly with the tongs. It barely moved. Then he tried to grasp it more vigorously. Suddenly, the phone fell down and out of sight, into the sewer system below. I thanked them all for their efforts and went off to get a new phone. — Kayvan Gabbay Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson, Winnie Hu and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
